You're reading: Instagram user boasts possession of mascara from MH17 crash site

On July 24, an Instagram user nicknamed “zolotosya” posted a typical girlish picture – a hand with painted in bright pink holding a tube of mascara.

“Mascara from Amsterdam. From the field, to be precise. You know what I mean…” she wrote explaining the photo with a #boeing777 hashtag. She said a looter at the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crash site had gifted the eye-enhancing cosmetic to her. 

The post was deleted after other Ukrainian users poured scornful comments beneath the girl’s post. Screenshots can be found that show the post and comments. The Kyiv Post didn’t see the original post.

The alleged mascara owner posted the showboat picture from the eastern Ukrainian city of Torez, located close to where the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 flight was shot down by Kremlin-backed guerillas on July 17, killing all 298 people on board, including more than 80 children.

It is only one of the many reports of looting taking place at the plane’s crash scene.

On July 24 the Daily Mail reported that the wife of one of the MH17 victims had to cancel her dead husband’s credit cards, because they appeared to be used after the crash.

The article also said that some of the victims’ mobile phones were being answered by strangers. The same reports were published by The Mirror. It also mentions that locals have been stealing metal parts from the crash site to sell them for scrap.

The Kyiv Post’s reporters did see people looking like locals who were wandering among the debris and looking through some of the passengers’ belongings soon after the crash, but didn’t personally see them take anything.

At least case of looting turned out to be false. Some media and bloggers shared a photo of one of the terrorists holding a small golden band in his hand, and assumed it was a ring he had taken from one of the victims. However, the image is actually a snapshot from a video report by Vice News, which shows terrorists looking through the debris. The item the man is seen checking out is something that he found among the pieces of postal boxes, evidently from the plane’s cargo department.

The girl with the mascara said on Instagram that the trophy was given to her by “a looter she knows.” She also wrote that she was a separatist and that she is “sick of everything Ukrainian due to the recent events.”